Frontiers in Bioscience-Landmark (FBL) is published by IMR Press from Volume 26 Issue 5 (2021). Previous articles were published by another publisher on a subscription basis, and they are hosted by IMR Press on imrpress.com as a courtesy and upon agreement with Frontiers in Bioscience.
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The optokinetic drum has become an appropriate tool to examine visual properties of mice. We performed baseline measurements using mice of the inbred strains C3H, C57BL/6, BALB/c, JF1, 129 and DBA/2 at the age of 8-15 weeks. Each individual C57BL/6, 129 and JF1 mouse was reliably identified as non-affected in vision by determining head-tracking responses. C3H mice were used as negative control because of their inherited retinal degeneration; as expected, they did not respond to the moving stripe pattern. Surprisingly, BALB/c and DBA/2 mice showed the same result. Electroretinography, funduscopy and histology of BALB/c mice did not reveal any abnormality concerning the structure or function of the retina and the remaining eye. Therefore, it might be assumed that BALB/c mice suffer from disturbances of the central visual system. Preliminary results from linkage analysis of the non-responding phenotype in the BALB/c mice indicate a recessive, monogenic mode of inheritance; the causative gene is located on chromosome 7, but significantly different from the albino locus. In conclusion, C57BL/6, 129 and JF1 represent appropriate inbred strains for high throughput screenings with the optokinetic drum.